The Brussels Lions Club would like to sincerely thank the community for the support they gave us to help make for one of the most successful Belgian Days ever. Without the donations by local businesses to the raffle, volunteer manpower to assist us in all the areas and of course the attendance by everyone who came to Belgian Days, we would not be able to continue the wonderful event that Belgian Days has become over the 56-year history of the club.

The success of Belgian Days this year will allow us to continue providing scholarships to Southern Door students, loaning out medical equipment to those in need, helping maintain the Brussels Town Park and donating to many other activities at Southern Door and in the community. It also allows us to contribute to the many charitable causes supported by Lions Clubs International throughout the world including their quest to eliminate preventable blindness.

As Lions Clubs International celebrates 100 years of service worldwide we are proud that the Brussels Lions Club along with the other five Lions Clubs in Door County can fulfill the centennial motto of “Where there’s a need, there’s a Lion.”

Lion Jim Noll

Brussels

Gallagher stands

for freedom

I met Mike Gallagher two weeks ago and was impressed. He listens. He is thoughtful. Mike Gallagher has shown consistent leadership. During college, after joining the Marine Corps, and since then, Mike has demonstrated the leadership and national security experience we need in Washington. Too often we elect people that become another cog in the bureaucracy of D.C. I’m convinced Mike Gallagher will spend his time there representing all of us in Northeast Wisconsin, and will continue the fight to defend our homeland.

When I hear him speak, Mike reminds me of a quote from the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” In the movie, Jimmy Stewart’s character says “Boys forget what their country means by just reading The Land of the Free in history books. When they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books … Men should hold it up in front of them every single day of their lives and say: I’m free to think and to speak.”

I believe that is what Mike Gallagher believes and that he will fight for. Above all else, that’s why I’ll be voting to send Mike Gallagher to Washington.

Mike Clumpner

Sturgeon Bay

And so it goes

True to form, like the last eight years of doing nothing, Congress is at it again; going home with a clear conscious, taking their seven-week vacation, without passing a Zika virus funding bill. The reason was the Republicans had tacked on a decrease in funding for women’s health.

It sure appears, for whatever reason, Republicans will go to extremes to defund anything relating to women or their health. So what if it might cost upward of a million dollars to take care of a child born with defects from Zika, they probably wouldn’t fund that either.

Remember during the whole time they are off, it is mosquito season around the country. Should even one child suffer because of their incompetence to cooperate with each other?

And so it goes, when are we as voters going to wake up? How about when entering into the voting booth this fall, we say to ourselves, “If you’re in you’re out.” No wonder there is such turmoil in our country, when our supposed leaders at the top won’t even try to be civil, to cooperate or listen to each other. It appears they have no compassion for their fellow man or their country, just their own agendas and that of the lobbyists. They should all be ashamed of themselves.

Carol Schmidt

Baileys Harbor

Embracing

Jim Crow

Congratulations are certainly in order for state Rep. Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, for using his public office to issue a campaign press release announcing his intention to pursue Louisiana’s “Blue Lives Matter” legislation which adds the potential for “hate crime” penalty enhancements against any citizen interacting with state law enforcement.

Kitchens, knowingly or not, is espousing the historic segregationist policy intended to quash citizen dissent, free speech rights and to double down on potential oppression of populations of color. Welcome Jim Crow, to Wisconsin.

With this current “blue lives” GOP trial balloon, initially floated by Rep. David Steffen, R-Howard, immediately after the tragic loss of five law enforcement officers in Dallas, we witness again the GOP fascist tendency, politicizing a horrific event which they presume will be an election advantage for them, this being another pretense to stricter law and order by instilling public fear.

Two questions need to be asked. Will this legislation do anything to prevent violence against law enforcement personnel, and is the rhetoric of enhanced danger for these civil servants a reality? Apply the potential for hate crime penalties to the recent unconstitutional arrests by Scott Walker’s Capitol police, quelling singers and arresting people criticizing Chief Erwin and other officers. Adding hate crime enhancements to those types of judicially defined attempts at suppressing constitutionally guaranteed public dissent will only lead to future escalation of tensions, proportional to the added means for state repression Kitchens is proposing.

FBI national statistics show intentional killings of law enforcement personnel were down 20 percent in 2015, compared to 2014, less than 50, and roughly equivalent to accidental officer deaths, those being largely automobile related tragedies. No “growing” resentment exists against law enforcement. Justifiable outcry against the system that grants immunity with impunity, for individual officers killing black citizens over petty offenses, is completely predictable and deserves public denunciation as much as the killing of any police officer should.

Louisiana’s recent passage of “Blue Lives Matter” was intentional demeaning of the “Black Lives Matter” movement and is an unconscionable insult to the significant reasons behind hate crime provisions for those minorities historically persecuted, from genocide inflicted upon our indigenous first nation peoples, through the numerous economic models of plantation slavery, disenfranchisement of women and LGBTQ oppression and others.

If “Blue Lives” really mattered to Kitchens, he’d be pursuing gun restrictions and greater economic equality for his constituents instead of promoting an unwarranted means for further citizen repression. With Kitchens’ seeming indifference to the current iteration of the plantation slavery model, 16 CAFOs in Kewaunee County, and with his prioritizing of this “thin blue line” over his constituent’s crisis need for clean water and relief from subjugation to life threatening environmental pollution, while unmentioned public subsidies expand to support grossly underpaid, very deserving, hardworking farm laborers, Joel’s warm embrace of old Jim Crow shouldn’t be much of a surprise to district voters.

Donald Freix

Fish Creek

It’s time

for a change

Let’s consider the following:

•White Lives Matter

•Blue Lives Matter

•National Association for the Advancement of White People

•Congressional White Caucus

•White Entertainment Television

If any of the above organizations or movements were real, they’d be labeled as “racist.” And for good reason! But, they are apparently not viewed in a negative light if the term “black” is substituted for white or blue. Why?

President Obama seems to encourage racism. He spoke to the graduating class at Howard University and urged them to embrace their “blackness.” If George W. Bush, or any former president, had told a predominantly white group to embrace their white ethnicity, he would have been labeled a racist. But not Obama. Why?

Obama tends to inject race into just about every event. He did it in Ferguson, Mo., involving Michael Brown, and again in Cleveland, where the police shot a 12-year-old who was brandishing a toy gun. Obama rushed to judgment and declared these incidents to be racially motivated, when in fact they were not. Has he properly labeled the Dallas shooting as racist, since the shooter himself declared it as a racially based crime? He and others such as Al Sharpton have set back racial relations instead of advancing them.

I grew up in the ’60s and experienced racism firsthand. It was ugly. I’ve strived to be someone who doesn’t see color or race or religion or sexual preference, and have tried to pass these values on to my children. However, during the past eight years under President Obama, I have increasingly become more and more jaded due to his constant rhetoric on the subject.

Let’s stop the destructive narratives and stick to FACTS about crime. Ninety-nine-plus percent of all police are good, law-abiding citizens. Most black, white, gay, et al, people are, too. There are a few bad apples in every barrel. Don’t label the whole barrel, Mr. President.

If disagreeing with Obama’s approach labels me as a racist, there is something seriously wrong with our society.